Scrum Master II

From The Scrum Guide 2020:

“The Scrum Master is accountable for establishing Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide. They do this by helping everyone understand Scrum theory and practice, both within the Scrum Team and the organisation.

The Scrum Master is accountable for the Scrum Team’s effectiveness. They do this by enabling the Scrum Team to improve its practices, within the Scrum framework.

Scrum Masters are true leaders who serve the Scrum Team and the larger organisation.”

Source : https://scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2020/2020-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf (contains full description.)

The Scrum Master II role is the continuation of an Agile career.

The Scrum Master role at Edenred PayTech closely follows the definition in the Scrum Guide. Additionally we ask our Scrum Masters to gain and practice skills from wider Agile disciplines such as Kanban, Disciplined Agile, and Better Value Sooner Safer Happier, as we realise that one-Scrum-size does not fit all team contexts.

The Scrum Master does not govern nor manage the Product Backlog for the team. This is done jointly by the Product Manager/Product Owner, and the team (via pulling work into the Sprint Backlog each sprint). The Scrum Master facilitates, and encourages such backlog grooming and refinement.

Importantly a key aspect of the Scrum Master’s role is to champion early detection and removal / mitigation of cross-team dependencies. Such can create bottlenecks, ie: constraints that left unresolved will slow throughput of value to zero.

The Scrum Master II role typically covers two teams, and a person in this role demonstrates the 8 Stances of the Scrum Master. The Scrum Master as a:

Servant Leader Coach Facilitator Teacher Mentor Manager Impediment Remover Change Agent

Accountable to

• Scrum/Kanban Team

• Agile Lead

Key Working Relationships

• Agile Team

• Product Owner & Product Manager

• Business stakeholders

• Cross-collaboration with other teams via other Scrum Masters

Key Responsibilities

• Establishes Sprint Goals and enables team to focus upon, and achieve these. Ensures that Sprint Goals are aligned to quarterly team-level Programme Increments and associated value definitions.

• Embeds good Agile practices and associated Ways of Working (WoW) at team level, and influences the Engineering and Product departments via wider conversations, for example through our Agile Community of Practice.

• Discovers and commits Objectives and Key Results at the team level to measure success of WoW changes; uses metrics-as-feedback (eg: via LinearB) to establish a culture of evidence-based continuous improvement.

• Coaches and influences the Scrum Team towards improving WoW while taking into account, and balancing all aspects of Better Value Sooner Safer Happier.

• Proactively identifies, triages, unblocks, and escalates impediments impacting the Scrum Team. Establishes a culture of preventing impediments from occurring in preference to mitigating after-the-event.

Skills & Behaviours

Role Specific

• Championing Ways of Working (WoW) inside Scrum and/or Lean Agile (Kanban) teams, enabling the completion of Sprint Goals to deliver incremental customer value.

• You will be a self-learner who rapidly expands their knowledge of Agile practices, frameworks, and techniques. It is likely that you attend Agile meetups either inside or outside the company, and share ideas and learning with your peers.

• You will have a level 1 qualification in Agile such as PSM1, CSM, DASM, KMP, or ICP. Ideally you should be studying towards, or have achieved a level 2 / advanced qualification in Agile.

• Your background and experience is of paramount importance to help teams adopt an holistic view of software engineering. You may come from a computer science, pure science, business, military, or any other background. The key is being able to demonstrate knowledge of, and application of agility in practice & context with those whom you work with.

• You will have experience of working in an Agile iterative and/or incremental environment regularly solving problems and delivering value to customers. This does not need to be a software delivery environment, however the nature of our work means that knowledge of various Software Delivery Lifecycles is advantageous.

• You will practice the 8 stances of the Scrum Master, and will be able to shift your approach according to needs of the team.

• Significant experience of at least one, ideally two Agile frameworks and associated methods. Preference given to Scrum and Kanban.

• Able to communicate “why Agile” as well as “how to do Agile” to a varied audience including both those from software-technical and non-software-technical backgrounds.

• Experience of adopting Lean Principles (eg: focus on value, waste identification and elimination) with examples of successful changes to behaviour and practice yielding positive impact upon customer value delivered.

• Pragmatic / Agnostic Agile: selects methods and techniques best suited to context always in the context of people over process over tool.

• Evolving the team’s WoW to support the business’ North Star and associated key Values (https://www.edenred.com/en/candidates/our-values).

• Experience of scaling Agile WoW across at least two teams using appropriate elements of a core scaling framework such as Disciplined Agile, Nexus, LeSS and/or SAFe.

• Agile Planning focused on incremental delivery of internal and external customer value over volume of work.

• Able to shift from Servant Lead to Leader when initial or follow-up direction is needed to kickstart changes to working patterns or learned behaviour.

• Close working with Product Owner and Product Manager to curate a backlog of options for potential commitment to deliver.

• Ability to challenge and push back to defend the team to ensure focus remains on the safe delivery of value.

• Detailed knowledge of Agile practices and techniques such as (but not limited to) Story Mapping, Impact Mapping, Event Storming and Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD).

• Experience of working in a DevOps environment beneficial.

Behavioural

• Learner: seeks out new ideas from the worldwide Agile community, and can rapidly assimilate new knowledge, test such for applicability in-context, and apply that which has value to the team and customer.

• Critical thinker: can analyse the facts and form a judgement based on the evidence; is able to rapidly shift world view when new evidence supplants the old. All, with the aim of delivering better customer value from a motivated, happy team.

• Personable: enthusiastic, go-to member of the team who is emotionally intelligent and able to balance different emotional needs and viewpoints of team members and stakeholders.

• Servant Leader: supporting the team in achieving Better Value Sooner Safer Happier.

• Team-level Agile coach: supporting the team to discover options for improving their Agile WoW, and reason why.

• Influencer – can articulate and challenge ideas and concepts relating to agility and/or DevOps in Engineering and Product to better align outputs to outcomes delivering customer value.

• Able to work with a high degree of autonomy with team to determine effective ways to deliver value in an emergent context.

• Demonstrates high degree of Emotional Intelligence with regard to self and others.

• Encourages autonomy and ownership inside own team.

Why Edenred PayTech?

We are a subsidiary of the Edenred group and leaders in prepaid solutions including banking, virtual cards, debit, credit, and prepaid processing.

As an Edenred PayTech employee you will get the support and structure that you need to enjoy your work and develop your career while doing what you love and making a difference in a fast-paced and innovative business.

What you will get:

• 25 days annual leave plus Bank Holidays

• Hybrid working environment with a 3 days per week in the office

• Life insurance (4x salary)

• Wellbeing Employee Assistance Program (extended access to family members)

• Employee discount shopping platform

• Digital learning platform

• Complimentary fruit and other ‘in office’ snacks & refreshments

• Volunteering programme

• Social events

• Pension Scheme – employer 6% with minimum employee contribution 3%

• Discretionary bonus scheme based on company and personal performance

• Holiday trading scheme (buy or sell up to 5 days)

• Medical & international travel cover (leisure and action sports)

• Employee referral bonus scheme

• Season ticket loan

• Cycle to Work scheme

Diversity:

Edenred PayTech are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We will not discriminate against any applicant or employee based on age, race, colour, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, national origin, citizenship, marital status or civil partnership/union status, disability, pregnancy, genetic information, or any other basis prohibited by applicable country or local law